Page:Wit, humor, and Shakspeare. Twelve essays (IA cu31924013161223).pdf/258

 written the poems, else there could have been no cover in using his name.

Did Ben Jonson, who was intimate with Bacon, know the secret of the authorship of the plays, and thus know that the manuscripts in use among the players must have been copies, and yet say, in praise of Shakspeare, "I remember the players have often mentioned it as an honor to Shakspeare, that in writing (whatever he penned) he never blotted out a line"? Jonson could never have written so in the secret conviction that Shakspeare did not compose the lines, some of which Jonson wished he had blotted.

With respect to the saying which was common among the players, the following points deserve consideration: First, it may have been a generalization carelessly made by admiring friends and comrades; second, what did they really know about it? They only saw the acting copies made for the theatre whose property they were. They knew nothing about Shakspeare's preliminary sketches and studies, the first drafts, the tentative outlines and passages. Third, the total absence of suspicion among them that he did not write the plays, but only copied them from some unknown author's manuscript, is unaccountable. Every probability would be against it. Among the players who knew Shakspeare, saw his daily life, computed how and where he spent his time, gauged him as a companion and a wit, such a secret would soonest leak out and spread all over London, or his reputed authorship would be soonest exploded and treated as a joke. For they and Jonson best knew the man.